Niko in Japan – Green power (part 3/4)

Green hydrogen is the future and the European industry can be a key player.

Setting the scene

During the decarbonization conference in Tokyo on Tuesday December 6th a panel discussion was held on hydrogen. The discussion was moderated by Kim Demeyer of Flanders Investment & Trade (FIT) and the participants were Fabrice Stassin of Umicore , Francois Michel of John Cockerill , Yu Aonuma of Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) and undersigned.

Green hydrogen is a hot topic and it has become even hotter due to the recent energy crisis. The technology, in how it is produced, transported and used, is evolving rapidly with new announcements being made on a weekly basis. It’s difficult to keep track of what is happening and how we are evolving along the path of a decarbonized society using green hydrogen.

While grey hydrogen is already being used in many sectors today, like petrochemicals and fertilizer production, other avenues to use hydrogen as an energy carrier and fuel are being explored in several new sectors.

This comes with several challenges, like scaling up production of equipment to meet the demand, including the materials required to production of equipment, but also addressing the price gap that still exists today between green and grey hydrogen.

Electrolyzer technology

Hydrogen is the lightest existing molecule and is one of the core components of organic materials. It is a byproduct of crude oil and gas refinery and has been produced as such since a very long time. As this process is using fossil carbon fuels as a resource the hydrogen produced this way is considered as grey and is in no way carbon emission neutral.

An alternative way to produce hydrogen in large quantities is by electrolysis. Electrical power is supplied to a cathodic system suspended in water with a high purity. The electrolysis process produces hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen is collected and either cooled down to liquid state (-253°C), either compressed (350 to 700 bars) in order to increase a suitable mass and energy density for an effective transport of the product to the consumers.

Three electrolysis technologies are being available to produce hydrogen today: Alkaline electrolysis, Polymer Electrolyte Membrane electrolysis (PEM), and Solid Oxide Electrolysis (SOE), each technology having reached a certain level of maturity (TRL), and each with specific advantages and disadvantages.

John Cockerill is the global market leader in the manufacturing of pressurized alkaline electrolyzers, ramping up to a manufacturing capacity to 8 GW/yr by 2025 and 18 GW/yr by 2030. Due to the booming hydrogen economy John Cockerill has expanded enormously over the past decade opening factories in Europe, China and India. They have supplied combined 153 MW of capacity to customers in 2021, giving it a 33 % global market share.

Mr. Francois Michel believes that alkaline is and will remain the leading electrolyzer technology for many years as it is the most mature and well established technology and it does require the least precious metals for the production. Other advantages are the relative low cost, the long-term stability and the availability of high capacity stacks (MW range).

Floating production

For the production of green hydrogen a renewable energy source is required. Using electrical energy from non-sustainable sources (like LNG powered electrical generator plants) does not lead to emission-free hydrogen, hence hydrogen produced by this type of electrical energy is still considered as grey. If the carbon emissions during the generation of carbon fueled electrical energy are captured, then hydrogen produced with this type of electrical energy is labelled as ‘blue’ hydrogen.

So to produce truly green hydrogen you need a renewable energy source. Offshore wind is considered to be the most important source of renewable energy for the production of green hydrogen. Currently pilot projects are being developed to build hydrogen factories ashore that will use green electrical energy. This energy can be retrieved from near-shore bottom-fixed offshore wind farms and this energy is being transported to shore by subsea cabling.

A next step will be to start producing green hydrogen directly offshore on board of bottom-fixed substations. This is called a centralized configuration where each individual offshore wind turbine supplies electrical power by subsea cabling to the central hydrogen production plant. This setup eliminates long subsea cabling to transport the electrical energy to shore. Instead of electrons (electricity) transporting energy, it will be molecules transporting energy (hydrogen). To transport the green hydrogen to the consumers either shipping can be considered. This will require intermediate storage capacity offshore near the production plant and an offshore platform-to-ship transfer system. An alternative might be to transport the hydrogen through subsea pipelines ashore. In some locations existing subsea O&G pipelines can be considered to reuse them as such.

Looking at the future deep water developments, the next step will be to start producing green hydrogen directly on board of either a floating wind turbine (decentralized), either on board of a floating substation near a floating wind farm (centralized). As turbines are expected to keep increasing in size, it is expected that the required space to integrate an effective hydrogen production plant on such a floating turbine will be available. This setup is a decentralized configuration which will require intermediate storage on board of the turbine floater as a buffer and a large floating storage facility to collect the hydrogen produced by each turbine. To further bring the hydrogen ashore either shipping or subsea pipelines can be considered.

But floating hydrogen production is full of challenges. Up to date nobody has any experience with the efficiency of floating hydrogen production. Nobody can tell to what acceleration and load limits hydrogen plants can continue to work safely and efficiently. It will require further research to define the reduction in efficiency due to the accelerations experienced on a moving/floating platform.

Another further step might be to not only produce green hydrogen on board of a floating wind turbine, but to capture CO2 directly from sea water and to use both base materials (hydrogen and CO2) to produce green methanol. Methanol has the advantage of a higher energy density and handling characteristics that are similar to the well-known carbon fuels.

Scarcity of resources

Beyond energy capacity, also resource scarcity is a concern looking at hydrogen production powered by offshore wind energy. As well when it regards the availability of fresh water as raw material for the production of hydrogen, as regarding rare earth metals that are used in the production of electrolyzers.

For alkaline electrolyzers, the electrodes often are based on iron or steel but also require nickel, as an alkaline environment requires sufficient corrosion resistance. Nickel, be it increasing in price recently, is abundantly available worldwide. For the membranes Zirfon is one market standard using zirconium as one of its components. For PEM the metals being used for the electrodes are titanium, gold, iridium and/or platinum. For SOE the required metals are zirconium and yttrium (for the electrolyte). In some electrolysis processes also ruthenium is being used. The research community therefore is looking for alternatives making use of abundant metals, like the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan.

Umicore has been specializing for years in the refining of rare earth metals like gold, platinum, iridium, ruthenium and nickel. They operate currently one of the world’s largest precious metals ?facilities. As typically more precious metals are required in fuel cells compared to electrolyzers, the focus of Umicore is rather on the fuel cell market.

The fresh water feed to hydrogen plants can either be regular distribution water (if available in sufficient quantities), either recycled waste water (where EKOPAK Sustainable Water is a specialist), either desalinated seawater.

When looking at offshore hydrogen production only desalinated sea water remains an option. Now three main challenges are identified here.

1.?????The desalination process requires an enormous amount of energy, either thermal (for evaporation), pneumatic or electrical (for reverse osmosis).

2.?????The sea water feed needs to be sufficiently clean and pure, not containing too much sea organisms or other contaminants.

3.?????And the footprint of such a desalination plant is significant, therefore alternative technologies like forward osmosis are to be investigated.

Currently MULTI.engineering is investigating as well floating hydrogen production (MORAYBASE project - https://moraybase.com/), as floating desalination in combination with alkaline electrolysis by means of forward osmosis (INTENSSE-H2 project - https://www.blauwecluster.be/project/intensse-h2). The availability of pure feed water will have an important impact on the price of green hydrogen.

Use cases

Moving on to the transport and storage of hydrogen, several carriers, like ammonia, liquid hydrogen and green methanol can be considered. Each of these molecular energy carriers have advantages and disadvantages depending on the intended use case. Shipping is currently responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions, generating around 1 billion tonnes of CO2 and greenhouse gases each year. If it were a country, it would be the sixth largest polluter in the world. Hence it is worthwhile looking at marine transportation to see what carrier is the best. But unfortunately there isn’t one pathway to decarbonization. It depends heavily on the specific load profile of a ship which carrier might be the best. Furthermore factors like health, safety, availability (supply chain), installed energetic mass and volume density, price and TRL of the power equipment are very important.

Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) is investing in hydrogen for shorter routes and ammonia for international journeys, both ideally produced using renewable energy sources. Hydrogen in compressed form is ideal to decarbonize small ships that operate on shorter trade links and can refuel frequently. Ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen that emits no CO2 when burned, is the best option for container ships transporting cargo over long distances, and it is possible to store more ammonia on vessels than hydrogen.

As ammonia is already used globally as fertilizer in agriculture, a vast infrastructure already exists. But most ammonia today is generated in a highly energy-intensive process, which releases large amounts of CO2 and methane. The technology to produce renewable ammonia at scale and store it is not yet available. Ammonia is also a polluting fuel when it is burned. It releases potent nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, so ships running on it will need to install selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to convert NOx from exhaust fumes into water vapor and nitrogen. Further Ammonia is highly toxic compared to methanol, an ammonia spill could be a huge disaster that would devastate marine ecosystems.

Some other companies see green methanol as a better option in the short term. The cost to build new vessels and retrofit existing ones to run on methanol is significantly lower than for alternative zero-carbon fuels. And unlike ammonia, liquid methanol does not need to be stored under pressure or at extremely cold temperatures. E.g. Maersk is betting on methanol to help it reach its 2040 net-zero target. The shipping giant is investing in a fleet of 12 container ships powered by methanol, produced using biofuels and renewable energy. Maersk says the new vessels will reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 1.5 million tonnes when they start operating. Methanol also doesn’t present the pollution issues that ammonia has and is far less toxic to handle. The fuel is readily biodegradable in water, breaking down within seven days in the case of a spill. But it is expected to be more expensive than ammonia because you have to capture CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is immature technology that is extremely expensive and highly inefficient.”

What next?

For a lot of questions and challenges it is clear that a lot of research is still to be done. Our belief is that only a structured, academic R&D approach can find the answers to an often multi-factor and complicated . In order to find the answers to an often multi-factor and complicated set of questions with quite some stakeholders. For example it has no use to simply put a random floater somewhere at sea and then test and see what happens when you start producing hydrogen afloat. There are too many influencing factors, hence research step by step with the collaboration of academics, energy providers, equipment makers, floating specialists and electrolyzer specialists is advised. Like the Molecules at Sea research project ?(“MuSe”) that has been kicked off last week, a collaboration between Universiteit Gent and Université Catholique de Louvain , led by professors Kevin Van Geem , Lieven Vandevelde , Joris Proost, Emile Cornelissen , Mark Saeys and Frederik Vandendriessche (ref. https://research.ugent.be/web/result/project/ca803057-35b7-4361-8c02-f5887806c594/details/en ).

Besides research, in order to get to development and industrial scale commercialization also massive investments will be needed. Countries must ramp up their renewable energy production significantly to produce zero-carbon fuels. Less than 0.2 million tonnes of renewable methanol is produced annually, and at present ammonia production relies heavily on fossil fuels.

Now to produce hydrogen-derived fuels at scale, countries must invest in electrolyzers and renewable energy capacity, mainly wind and solar. Apparently one country that is investing heavily in hydrogen, is Australia. It has announced plans to build 40 gigawatts of electrolyser capacity by 2030, much of it near major ports. And besides Australia also Belgium and Japan are both investigating and initiating a hydrogen-based value chain, looking as well to hydrogen and green derivates’ production, as to consumers and the required infrastructure to serves them. The worldwide race is on, and MULTI.engineering is more than willing to assist.

Credits

This article is being based on the preparation and moderation by Kim Demeyer and the input by the panel participants. Also further info from the 22/07/2022 article by Isabelle Gerretsen in The Maritime Executive has been used as a source (full article at https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/the-decarbonization-tradeoffs-for-ammonia-methanol-and-h2 and https://chinadialogueocean.net/en/climate/shipping-industry-prepares-for-a-future-powered-by-sustainable-fuels/ ).

If you would like to learn more about our vision on future green hydrogen production afloat, please contact me at [email protected] .

Also please read my other articles in this topic:

• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/niko-japan-blue-cluster-part-14-niko-fierens
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/niko-japan-floating-typhoons-part-24-niko-fierens